This blog post is prompted by a conversation that got started on Facebook about this woman and her mangled singing of "Una Voce Poco Fa". The sound clip here is embedded in a rather snarky attack on her. I, personally, had never heard of her, but then I am a total nerd who only watches PBS and the occasional cable channel. I agree that her singing is quite mediocre (and would not get her in the door of one of New York's no pay opera companies) and a lot of what she says is quite absurd (that opera singers all look like fat Valkyries) but why all this malice? What particularly strikes me is that a lot of it revolves around her having the audacity to call herself an "opera singer".
This post (the singing, the aria choice, the snarky comments made by the writer) really hit a nerve with me. First of all it's ironic that as mass media is dumbing down (this woman actually makes a lot of money mangling opera, apparently), amateur groups have raised the bar such that people with vocal flaws, who can slog through their favorite operatic repertoire with pleasure, are totally shut out. So this seems quite schizy. These are the types of singers one used to hear at those groups when I sang there in the 1970s, albeit with different types of vocal issues (you didn't hear anyone singing in a pop idiom, but there were lots of breathy light sopranos, muddy mezzos, etc.)
I sang "Una Voce Poco Fa" at an audition 35 years ago, no better than this, although differently - my coloratura was always very clean, but I barely made it up to the high B and camouflaged this by jumping down two octaves and hanging onto the low B for dear life. This mediocre performance landed me the role of Giovanna Seymour in an amateur production of Anna Bolena, something that could never happen today.
And it is singers like this that I expected to hear at all those meetups I went to, albeit ones who were working on technique with teachers, not people who had somehow managed to become media stars.
As for the other core issue addressed here, it is: can you call yourself an opera singer if you are not strictly speaking, singing operas?
This hits a nerve because I once had a long discussion with my therapist about how my image of myself as an opera singer had been spoiled by all the contact I have had in recent years (mostly online) with working (for pay or not for pay) singers. In the years since I was "discovered" by The Mentor, I have sung one concert version of Samson et Dalila with no chorus and a piano, three concerts of operatic scenes, the odd aria or two at charity events or nursing homes, and numerous church solos. In that same time period I have probably spent between 30 and 50 hours each week working (as an editor or indexer, or, several years ago, as a manager of same), and 14 hours a week on eldercare.
The message I got from my therapist is I can be who I say I am. This doesn't mean I should tell lies, or have an unrealistic assessment of my gifts or abilities, but that I am entitled to adopt the identity that fits with those moments when I feel most fully alive.
One of the reasons I use Facebook (and write this blog) is to keep it real. Really, with a few exceptions, no one except my voice teacher, choir director, and people at the church take me seriously as a singer or want to engage with me re: that part of my identity. This is true of singers and nonsingers. But I can choose what to put on Facebook. I can choose to write about my practice sessions, lessons, and minor gigs (singing a church solo) and not about the work I do for pay, because I spend enough hours doing that and thinking about it and when it's done it's done and it doesn't define me.
Some of the comments on Facebook about this woman entailed the fact that yes, she deserves kudos for having managed to make the most (and far more than anyone would have dreamed possible) of what she has.
So where do I start.....?
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